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I’ve managed put together some very basic aspects of Control Room already. So far, there’s

line-of-sight cones that draw around objects

turrets look within a limited angle.

doors that can be oriented(edit: kinda)

Guards have pathfinding and can return to their regular patrol after chasing an enemy

Players can create a selection box with the mouse to select multiple guards, and can order them around.

I’ve never been able to do any of those things before, so I’m pretty happy. I’ll go ahead and give out proper credit too: An excellent Vision Cone example, and an RTS example. I haven’t used the RTS example much yet, except for unit selection.

If I knew how, I would post something playable. Until then, here’s the Game Maker Studio project file.

This summer I plan on getting a head start for next semester’s Game Production Lab. I’ve been assigned to the game “Control Room”, which is a 2D, top-down, strategy and puzzle game about leading a group of operatives into a Secret Facility where you also happen to be a control room operator. So, you’re a double agent working to take down the facility while avoiding suspicion. I, for one, am ecstatic that we got a 2d strategy game to work on; as I am all about that shit.

Even better, is that Control Room will be made in Game Maker, which I have at least some experience in. Granted, I lost literally every project I ever worked on in GameMaker a few months ago, but I was gonna have to relearn certain aspects of it anyway. While I do have some serious gripes about GameMaker’s pricing structure, like why it costs $400 to add HTML5, Android, and iOS exporters, the program itself can be quite powerful.

And more importantly, it will be Game Development Done Right. I cannot stress enough how important it is to iterate on a game before you’ve even landed on what exactly it’s about. Next semester has the benefit of three whole months of prototyping beforehand, which I’ve already kinda sorta started.

Last semester, zero iteration, terrible development. Without getting too much into it, my experience in Game Lab last semester was mostly me trying to learn a whole new game engine and language while working on an untested game design. It was no fun, it really soured me on working with large groups that don’t communicate (or any size group that doesn’t communicate for that matter), and and it really drilled in the importance of pre-production and prototyping.

Anyways, I anticipate Control Room will be a very fun game to work on. I’ll try to post about progress if it’s significant and playable.